


Crippled by the Consequences

by lost_decade



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Angst, Freeform, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 19:32:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11698422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_decade/pseuds/lost_decade
Summary: The bed had always been left unmade, covers a crumpled mess in the centre as if they’d been dragged across the room or thrown to the floor in a scramble of passion and replaced there. Except the passion died ages ago, somewhere in between the end of a friendship and the beginning of another world championship title bid.





	Crippled by the Consequences

**Author's Note:**

> Basically just some weird second-person stream of consciousness type stuff - which was not at all what I sat down to write. Inspired by [this poem](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/02/02/true-love-2) by Barry Gifford, which is also where the title comes from.

It comes back sometimes in vague snippets. Toilet seat left up and toothpaste carelessly left on the side of the sink, cap not replaced. Knives always the wrong way round in the dishwasher, so if you tripped and fell there would surely be some life threatening injury. “Are you trying to cut out my fucking spleen?” you’d yelled once to an amused silence that you’d tried to be serious through but that hadn’t lasted very long. The bed had always been left unmade, covers a crumpled mess in the centre as if they’d been dragged across the room or thrown to the floor in a scramble of passion and replaced there. Except the passion died ages ago, somewhere in between the end of a friendship and the beginning of another world championship title bid. You know you’re partly to blame, possibly not having answered in the affirmative when the accusation of ‘you love her more’ was levelled at you. You love her differently, not necessarily more. More, now, obviously. But then? You can’t really say with all the years of distance.

_There’s a freaking bear cub on my porch!_   He sends you, complete with video that you already know he’s posted to Instagram anyway. Not that you check his regularly.

The bear is adorable.

Alaïa puts her hand onto the screen of your iPhone as if she can touch it, without realising that if she could it would probably kill her in one swipe. You cuddle her close and make a promise that she’ll be aware of all the dangerous things in the world before they can hurt her. She’ll be smart. Smart enough to not fall in love with the wrong people.

* * *

It’s not a bad thing, uniformity. In fact it’s kind of nice, coming home at the end of the day and everything being in its place. You lie back on the rug and lift Alaïa up in the air above you, smiling as she giggles in delight, groaning at the block of Duplo that’s wedged under your back. There’s a Lego F1 set up in one of the guest rooms that she’s too young to play with yet but that you know you’ll pack away anyway before she ever knows it even exists.

_Colorado looks cool_ , you reply that night while Vivian is in the bathroom getting ready for bed. It looks like freedom, you think. The sprawling mountains and thunderous sky. Salt on skin. His skin sticks in the memory, before all the ink, when the Nomex peeled down under teenage hands, fast and hot and sweaty.

Which of us let all that die, you wonder.

_You could stay at the ranch_ , is the reply a few days later. _If you’re gonna be studying out here like I heard._

You look at Google Maps. Colorado is three states and a good thousand miles over from Stanford. But you imagine it like it’s a fucking dream. The two of you. Dinner in front of the fire, bears in the garden. Him in his glasses that he doesn’t need to wear and you poring over a textbook while the rain falls outside and he kisses your neck just the way he used to.

You go.

Of all the crazy things that you shouldn’t do when your life is in a state of confusion and your wife is eight months pregnant. You go back because California is pretty and it’s just a couple of weeks. Not long at all in the lifetime of a Formula One World Champion.

"Hey everybody. This course looks so cool, I can’t wait to share my experiences here with you," you speak into the camera as Paul gives you the thumbs up.

It’s intensive. You need the weekend to escape.

* * *

Lewis points out which guest room is free. It’s luxurious. All dark panelled wood and a big canvas of a buffalo above the bed. It kind of feels like a hotel. A stranger’s chalet, entourage all around. They leave after the first afternoon and this is more meeting expectation - a bottle of vodka pulled from the freezer and passed back and forth in front of the giant unlit log fire.

You kiss him first, both sitting on the rug leaning back against the sofa, his neck bared so close to your lips. He ends up on top of you, naked on the floor and your legs wrapped around his waist. It feels like being sixteen again, when everything was just dreams.

In the morning you realise through a deathly hungover haze that you’ve left your toothbrush back in the villa in California. Lewis offers his without a thought and you stand in front of his bathroom mirror - a man of thirty-two with a wife and child and no idea of where you’re going.

You leave the toothpaste carelessly on the side, stepping into the shower and using Lewis’ shower gel, the scent of him ingrained into your skin in one way or another. It feels strangely impersonal though, all of it. How do you successfully have a one night stand with the long discarded love of your life?

There are no kisses that morning, just an awkward hug on the doorstep. Such is the shift in your lives that his world isn’t yours anymore. You have no clue how to inhabit each other’s space beyond the sex-filled nostalgia you cling to.

He got down on his knees once, when you were barely out of your teens. And you’d told him no.

* * *

You stack your mug into the dishwasher before you leave, tidying around in the kitchen where there’s alcohol sticky on the worktop. He watches, smiling from the doorway. “I’ve got a cleaner to do that, man,” he says. And of course he does.  

You get the call that the baby’s coming when the car is coasting along the road home between Nice and Monaco - and if you had even been a little bit in doubt, the circumstances of your life dictate that it's too late to be.


End file.
